Join us for the largest annual Catholic literature conference in New England—if not the nation—as we explore foundational, neglected, and new works of American literature. Through engaging presentations on American novels, short stories, and poems, through fellowship and conversation, this conference will take stock of the “literary pulse” of America as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
 
In his 1835 Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote: “Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.” Yet he continues: “But amongst the thoughts which it suggests there is always one which is full of poetry, and that is the hidden nerve which gives vigor to the frame.”
 
Catholic historian Christopher Dawson wrote in the mid-20^th century of the “spokesmen” of the new American culture, “charged with a charismatic mission to the American people as its teachers, prophets, or interpreters.” He argued that “no society lies nearer to the cyclonic path of the forces of world change than the United States. . . . American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.”
 
Do our writers still occupy the roles of teacher, prophet, interpreter? And what wisdom for our own cyclonic times can be gleaned from our nation’s literary treasures?